Chicago community groups hope Olympics wish list becomes law

When international officials tour Chicago in April, just about the last thing Olympics boosters want them to encounter is community protests.

With that political reality in mind, local activists are pushing while their clout is greatest to ensure that minorities and poor residents benefit if Chicago wins its bid for the 2016 Summer Games.

Ald. Toni Preckwinkle (4th) said Thursday she plans to introduce an ordinance at next week's City Council meeting calling for expanded minority contracting requirements and affordable housing goals for Olympic projects.

Preckwinkle said her proposal is based on a "community benefits agreement" drafted several months ago by a coalition of neighborhood and labor groups. The ordinance would require that minority- and women-owned businesses get half of Olympic contracts and that developers seek to make 30 percent of the new housing at the Olympic Village site affordable.

Preckwinkle said she hopes the ordinance will be passed in March, in time for the inspection by officials of the International Olympic Committee. The committee's evaluation panel is paying visits to Chicago and other finalist cities -- Tokyo, Madrid and Rio de Janeiro -- before one is chosen in October.

"They want everybody on board and enthusiastic when the international committee visits," Preckwinkle said. "It's important that every city in the running shows they have strong depth of community support."

A spokeswoman for Mayor Richard Daley said officials can't comment because they haven't seen Preckwinkle's proposal.

Chicago's Olympic bid committee wouldn't say exactly where it stands on the plan. The committee will continue to work with community groups "to ensure that the Olympic Games, should they come to Chicago, provides the best possible benefit to everyone," spokesman Patrick Sandusky said.

Communities for an Equitable Olympics 2016, the coalition that has worked for the benefits agreement, believes the agreement is needed to prevent problems that occurred in other cities, such as poor residents in Atlanta being uprooted for the 1996 Games.

Jay Travis, executive director of the Kenwood Oakland Community Organization, which helped organize the coalition, said Preckwinkle's proposal doesn't contain everything the group wanted. "We do think as it goes forward we will have to fine-tune it a bit, but we're happy it's moving forward," she said.

Travis said protests are possible in April if an ordinance isn't approved. But "it's leverage we hope we won't have to use," she said.